Carte de visite of unknown girl. Photographer and location unknown. Circa 1870s. Size:  4 and 1/8 x 2 and 1/4″

Price:  15.00

Carte de visite of a beautiful and fashionable young girl, perhaps about age fourteen to sixteen. She wears a fitted jacket that has rather large buttons and a pleated v-neckline under a velvet collar. The jacket material has a vertical pattern running though it. I am not sure what type of material it is, perhaps cotton or possibly silk. (It almost has a silk moiré a.k.a. watered silk look.) Under the jacket or perhaps just in the v-neckline of the jacket we see what looks like a dark lace scarf or fichu type of article, attached or overlaid on a loose-fitting white collar. Just above the top jacket button appears an unknown something in white. Was this a flower or could it even have been a problem in the photographic process? (No offense to the photographer.) Besides the dangle-y earrings the girl wears a cross which hangs from a short bead-like necklace. Her hair is arranged flat on the top of her head, it seems to be adorned with a comb, while the sides are swept up to to give a little height, and her sausage curls are arranged behind her ears and fall just past shoulder length. As with all photos of people it is always interesting to see beyond our first impressions. What might strike as a bit of a sad look transforms beyond that one- dimensional impression when we notice her poise and loveliness.

There is nothing appearing on the back of the cardboard that the photo was mounted on, so the photographer is unknown, as is the exact date of the photo, but it’s estimated to be from the 1870s.